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Powering On-Page SEO and PPC to Boost SaaS Website Traffic

The rise of AI set off a series of shockwaves in the SEO services industry while handing Google the first serious threat in years to its preeminence. In response, the search and web ads giant is revamping its search engine results page (SERP).

Many companies are re-evaluating their marketing strategies, from social media marketing to SaaS SEO strategy. From this point on, it will be all the more essential to acknowledge Google’s changes and the role of AI in powering on-page search engine optimization (SEO) and Pay-per-click (PPC) ads to boost SaaS website traffic.

Google’s New SERP and Search Generative Experience (SGE)

Google’s new AI search experience, Google Search Generative Experience (SGE), integrates AI into the SERP. Instead of offering organic search results and featured snippets above the fold, organic results are further down the page and may impact non-paid search traffic and click-through rates.

While changes are still in play, the upshot for SaaS businesses is that Google’s search results pages will probably send less direct traffic to websites. At the same time, increased use of AI in an already competitive space will likely drive up keyword and ad prices.

Let’s look at an update.

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to optimizing elements on a website to improve its visibility, technical performance, and ranking in search engine results. On-page SEO now leverages AI tools for optimizing keywords, content relevance, and enhancing user experience.

Improving On-Page Search Rankings

With so much pressure to adapt to an AI marketing strategy, it can feel overwhelming where to start. A good strategy is to focus on shoring up the SEO basics, starting with technical SEO. The good thing about technical SEO techniques is that they give marketers a checklist of specific actions to improve SEO.

Technical SEO checklist for better search engine rankings

Technical SEO focuses on improving a website’s speed, security, mobile-friendliness, and user experience. Here are a few website elements that search engine bots evaluate:

Positive user experience: A positive user experience can lead to better search engine rankings; a poor user experience can negatively impact SEO efforts.

SaaS Content optimization: Optimizing content for organic traffic from specific search engines can help you rank higher in search results.
Canonicalization: This technical SEO approach involves choosing a preferred URL for a website’s content to avoid duplicate content issues, which can harm search engine rankings.
Mobile-friendliness: Good mobile UX is a ranking signal on most search engines, including Google and Bing. Mobile-friendly sites will show up higher in search results.

Page speed: Page and site speed are primary considerations for search engines. A technical SEO audit can help pinpoint where to improve on-page optimization.
Crawling and indexing: When search engines can crawl your website easily and quickly, it leads to better indexing and ranking of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs). Create XML sitemaps, use formatting and correct url structure to help search engines quickly glean and index content.

With an optimized on-page experience, your pay-per-click conversions should improve, too. Let’s go over some basics.

Effective SaaS Content Marketing and SEO

Content marketing is essential to online marketing efforts. Here are some tips for building strategies and creating content to fuel SaaS growth.

Design a content strategy with high-quality content conforming to Google’s EEAT framework.
Content creation should include blog posts, guides, webinars, and a case study of your ideal client’s success. Produce an “ultimate guide” of informative content addressing your target audience’s common questions. Be intentional about link building and internal links.
Optimize content for users and search engines: Use relevant keywords naturally throughout your content in meta tags, title tags, and meta descriptions. Ensure content is well-structured and easy to read. Avoid keyword stuffing.

Promote content across channels: Besides internal linking, share your content on social media, guest blog on industry websites, share case studies, and utilize email marketing to reach a wider audience.

What is PPC?

PPC is a digital advertising model that drives paid website traffic. Instead of free organic traffic, advertisers pay a fee each time someone clicks one of their ads. PPC strategies are evolving to leverage AI’s ability to analyze large data sets for precise targeting and bid management.

AI and PPC Marketing – Good and Bad News

AI makes some things harder even as it helps with other tasks. Keyword strategies are what fuel PPC marketing. The bad news is that AI is fueling more keyword competition, which drives costs. The good news is that all marketers can access new tools to help improve targeting, ad copy, and ad campaign efficiency.

PPC Strategies: Keyword Ideas for Targeting High-Intent Buyers

Different keywords map the buyer persona’s different awareness stages in the marketing funnel. Organizing content topics and long-tail keywords around search intent is a simple way to organize your approach.

Source: Penheel Marketing

Using Google Ads for High-Buying Intent Terms

By carefully selecting keywords and terms that prospective customers use when they’re ready to buy, a SaaS company or SEO agency can position your ads to capture this valuable audience.

Generally, it’s more cost-effective to run paid ads in the transactional phase of awareness when the prospect is highly intent to purchase. Use high-intent seed keywords within keyword phrases to attract users ready to pull out their credit cards. Examples include words such as buy, price, deals, and shipping.

Focusing on targeting and personalization is critical if your goal is to maximize ROI with targeted PPC campaigns. If you’re thinking that this can get complicated, you are right. Funnel Envy can help.

SaaS SEO and PPC Best Practices in 2024

On-page SEO and PPC can increase website traffic, but each has different strengths. SEO primes long-term growth, and PPC provides an immediate impact.

The magic balance? Combine them both! Use PPC data for SEO targeting, optimize both channels’ landing pages, and leverage PPC boosts for new content.

Here are the best practices to use as a PPC and SaaS SEO guide in 2024. These suggestions are prioritized from most important to least important. Every business differs, so you should adjust based on your marketing and customer acquisition goals.

Align goals: Ensure both efforts support shared objectives and use data from each to inform the other.
Optimize for user intent: Conduct thorough keyword research and create content for targeted landing pages.
Prioritize mobile experience: Design and optimize for mobile users and address technical SEO issues.
Focus on quality content: Create engaging SEO content and compelling ad copy for PPC. Make sure your blog includes high-quality backlinks.
Utilize data and analytics: Track performance with tools like Google Analytics. Conduct A/B tests and iterate strategies.

Landing Pages

On-page SEO and PPC for SaaS landing pages deserve special mention. At the landing page level, develop targeted landing pages for each PPC campaign and SEO keyword cluster to match the specific user intent behind the search query.

Focus on a clear value proposition and concise copy highlighting the benefits of your SaaS solution and addressing user pain points. Finally, optimize for conversions with an intuitive user experience, clear calls to action, and fast page load times.

On-page SEO and PPC Strategies: Drive Qualified Traffic

With best practices guiding your overall plan, here are some specific strategies.

Keyword Strategy, Research, and Targeting

Organize target keywords by intent and customer journey. Use a broad keyword list to cover general industry searches, niche keywords to target specific stages, and branded keywords to capture users already aware of your brand.

Analyze competitor’s SEO and PPC for keyword ranking factors. Identify high-performing keywords and leverage them in your campaigns while finding gaps and targeting underserved niches.

Research seasonal and trending topics. Tailor your keyword usage to current industry trends and seasonal events to capture timely traffic.

Leveraging PPC for Qualified Traffic

All traffic is not created equal. Besides converting sales, another benefit of PPC is it can help you qualify your website traffic. Here are some ideas:

Smart bidding strategies: Utilize automated bidding options like target CPA or ROAS to optimize ad spend and focus on conversions.
Retargeting campaigns: Target website visitors who haven’t converted yet with relevant ads reminding them of your product.
Dynamic search ads: Automatically generate ads based on your website content, ensuring relevance to user searches.
Experiment with different ad formats: Test video, image, and carousel ads to see what resonates best with your target audience.
Track and analyze data: Regularly monitor the performance of your SEO and PPC campaigns, using insights to adjust strategies and optimize for better results.

Remember that building a successful SaaS SEO and PPC strategy is ongoing. Experiment, test, and refine your approach based on data to attract qualified traffic and convert visitors into paying customers.

Moving Ahead with On-Page SEO and PPC

Anyone in the business can tell you digital marketing wasn’t easy even before AI. While AI tools are opening up significant advantages, they are also introducing new challenges, not to mention a considerable learning curve.

If you are wondering where to start with on-page SEO and PPC to boost your SaaS website traffic, Funnel Envy can help. We have used AI tools before the ChatGTP era and are experts in new integration and possibilities. You don’t have to do this alone. Reach out today to get started.

By Kala P|2024-01-25T04:52:10-08:00February 5th, 2024|Paid Media|0 Comments

How to Make Your Ads Less Expensive

Paid advertising campaigns on one of today’s many prominent digital media channels can be a valuable part of any funnel. One of the key advantages of paid ads (also called PPC) is that they offer quicker access to a larger audience than organic strategies like SEO and referral marketing. In this sense, building a massive audience almost “overnight” is possible, often reducing the time it takes to achieve your KPIs.

But like every strategy to promote your funnel and company offerings, paid advertising has a downside: cost. Investing in paid placement on social media networks and search engines can get expensive, especially if you aren’t sure about the return you’re getting.

Based on our experiences working with clients incorporating paid advertising campaigns into their funnel, we’ve found a few specific strategies work best for cost reduction.

Tweak Audience Targeting

On most paid advertising platforms – especially social media networks – one of the first things you’ll do is set up a target audience that dictates what kind of people will see your ads. One significant determining factor is often location: some companies running ads will want to restrict them to people in a specific location. For many software and digital services companies, geography is no longer significant in determining their target audience for paid ads.

However, you can still use geography as a variable as you adjust your audience targeting until you can find an ideal audience set that gets you the results needed for sufficient ROI. Here are a few other ways to adjust your audience targeting:

By device. While it’s essential to ensure all elements of your funnel are accessible from any device, it’s sufficient to experiment and see if one particular device works better for generating engagement and visitors.
Browsing time. Each PPC platform will allow you to target the time of day or browsing windows slightly differently. You may find it best to break up these metrics into six or 8-hour periods and see which timing works best.
Lookalike audience. A lookalike audience is a predictive feature that allows a network to list people who share the same characteristics as another group of people who have already shown interest in your audience. For example, on Facebook, you might use “Fans of the Business Page” as a lookalike audience to draw on for an ad campaign.

For many software and digital services companies, geography is no longer significant in determining their target audience for paid ads. Click To Tweet

Make the Offer Better

Another big element of getting more traffic from each ad campaign – thus lowering overall costs – is the offer; how do you intend to attract people into your funnel? It starts by getting them to click on the ad while browsing the platform on which it appears; an action sometimes referred to as a “clickthrough.” It is an important first step in any paid ad campaign. No matter how well-optimized your audience targeting or how great your ad creative is, you’ll struggle to bring in enough prospects if your offer isn’t as compelling as it should be.

There are many ways to improve your offer, but we’ve found a simple and quick way to upgrade substantially: keep your current offer but expand what you provide. For example, if you offer a 15% discount on an initial package, you may increase that discount to 20%. If you’re offering a 20-minute evaluation, maybe change it to 30 minutes.

If these adjustments don’t bring about sufficient improvement, you may want to consider completely changing the nature of the offer. In these situations, look to competitors or companies who work in related industries to see the most successful paid advertising offers.

Strengthen the Hook

In this context, the offer’s ” hook ” refers to the ad’s elements that bring in prospects. Usually, this consists of an image, a headline, and a “sub-headline” element that appears at the bottom. There’s also usually a CTA button that entices users to click and take the next step in the ad’s funnel.

Bringing as many prospects into the funnel as possible is crucial to minimize the amount of money you invest in each ad campaign. One way to do this is by improving the elements listed above. Pick an individual component to work on – like the headline – and go through some testing to determine an ideal version. From there, you can open up the testing to other ad creative elements. For example, should your subheadline be a question that piques readers’ curiosity or a bold statement that challenges their beliefs on an important subject? Either could be practical, depending on your specific needs and target audience.

Call in a Specialist as Needed

As is the case with most elements of a digital marketing campaign, sometimes it’s hard to have the right perspective when you are so close to the internal workings of your funnel. You and your team may have strong opinions about what is or isn’t working for your ad campaigns and the rest of your digital efforts, but you may be missing one key piece of perspective that’s hard to find inside your own business.

These are situations in which outside experience can be precious to your marketing efforts. Cost is a big factor here – there’s no point in reducing the amount of money you’re spending on paid ads for your funnel just to replace that spend with money going towards a consultant or expensive agency. And it’s true that in some cases, bringing in an outside party to review your ad campaigns can make things more convoluted and frustrating.

There are two keys here: first, you must seek assistance on a level that makes sense for your business and your budget. As a smaller startup just beginning to experiment with paid ads to bring in revenue, one probably doesn’t need to rush out to lock down a yearlong agreement with a boutique agency with a five-figure monthly retainer. Even a casual “brain-picking” session with a respected mentor or expert in their field can sometimes be enough to shed new light on a problem that helps you take steps towards solving it.

At FunnelEnvy, our team has many collective years of helping clients in all kinds of industries address challenges related to their marketing funnels, whether it involves paid ads, landing page optimization, or making forms more efficient for visitors. We use this background to give each client personalized attention to help them meet their goals. Whether that’s ensuring they spend less on advertising in favor of other methods or optimizing their current expenses to ensure they get as much return as possible from their ad campaigns, we can help.

If you’re interested in learning more about FunnelEnvy and how we work with our clients, click here to fill out a brief quiz that will allow us to learn more about your business and determine if we’d be a good fit to help with your funnel optimization needs.

By Raj C|2023-03-23T21:11:47-07:00April 3rd, 2023|Paid Media|0 Comments

Creating Effective Paid Ads for Modern Buyers

B2B marketers who have been around a while might recognize the early and mid-2010s as a golden era of paid advertising. Costs per click were less expensive, and budgets could go much further. As we move into 2023, paid ads are still an excellent way to attract a targeted audience. However, the channel has grown more complex and dynamic regarding drawing in the right people.

It’s still possible to successfully incorporate paid ads into your funnel and make them a positive investment in your marketing. You’ll just need to calibrate your approach a bit more carefully. The strategies and tips below will help.

Ensure All Ads Are Responsive

Responsive design ensures that content is accessible, viewable, and properly usable on all kinds of devices and has been around as a web design principle for a while. Still, considering the recent changes in the B2B audience, it’s critical to ensure all elements of your ad funnel operate well on all kinds of devices. According to data from Google, 70% or more of B2B searches originate on mobile devices. Many people from Generation Z who grew up using mobile devices their entire lives are now moving into professional roles related to B2B purchasing.

It’s not enough for an ad or landing page to load on a smartphone or tablet – it also has to be clickable, with accessibility for forms if your ad requires collecting information. Think about the usable elements of your ad funnel when someone squeezes and taps with their fingers instead of using a mouse.

Incorporate Multimedia Content

For a long time, standard ad formats have involved a main image, headline, and some text underneath the picture. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this format, today, several other forms of media are gaining popularity in advertising. Social networks like TikTok and Instagram, which emphasize video, are becoming much more popular than traditional options.

Think about the usable elements of your ad funnel when someone squeezes and taps with their fingers instead of using a mouse. Click To Tweet

If you don’t think TikTok is the right place for your brand, you might be surprised. Over 40% of TikTok users are between 30 and 49 years old. TikTok also boasts higher retention rates than most other networks. There are lots of devoted TikTokers of all ages – you probably know a few yourself – and while they may not specifically use it for B2B purposes, that doesn’t mean TikTok can’t work as an effective platform for that kind of marketing.

If you aren’t sure how to get started with videos in your ads, try starting with simple smartphone videos that you can record with basic equipment like a tripod or stabilizer device. Thanks to technology, you don’t need to invest five figures in a studio or production company to make quality B2B ad videos.

Include a Hard-Hitting Fact, Stat, or Statement

Attention-grabbing sentences are common in loads of marketing, from blog posts to emails to ads. It’s sometimes called a “hook” because you intend to lead the message and pull people’s attention to you. On most paid advertising platforms, users look at multiple different kinds of media, often scrolling through a home page or feed.

The statement or statistic aims to get someone to stop scrolling and think about your ad. Not everyone who stops to look at your ad will be a good fit for your funnel, and that’s okay – the fact that your hook was able to stop and get their attention is a good sign on its own.

What examples of hooks can you use to get someone’s attention in a paid ad campaign? Here are a few:

A quote from a customer testimonial
A statistic presented in a visual format, such as an infographic
Actual results from a customer case study or trial run
An abstract image or visual (as long as it’s at least loosely relevant to your offering)

With some creativity it’s possible to come up with a unique hook that draws in the specific audience you’re targeting. Your hook’s effectiveness is in your ad’s clickthrough rate, but you can also look into more advanced metrics for engagement, like time spent on the ad’s landing page or the number of repeat sessions with an ad campaign.

Speak Your Prospects’ Language

Whether using videos, text, or different communication tools, your content must resonate with the people you want to see your ads. You’re more likely to succeed when you use the type of words and descriptions they commonly use in their day-to-day roles. You don’t need to pack your ads and landing pages full of jargon or overly technical terms. Still, anyone who reads or hears a unique term or phrase they use often will immediately feel a connection with your ad and its associated landing page.

For the right balance, it can be helpful to include an actual quote from a client or someone in the industry, for example, a case study or expert interview. If you aren’t sure whether or not your video or ad copy has too much jargon, talk to an unbiased expert in that field. They’ll be able to tell you if your content sounds natural and normal or if it sounds like you are trying too hard to match the way a prospect might talk.

Final Thoughts on Making effective B2B ads today

On almost any social network you spend even a little bit of time on today, you’re bound to come across several different ads for advertisers in virtually any field – including B2B. You probably already know how effective these ads can be if you create them properly. You may even have purchased something or subscribed to a business because of one!

The biggest challenge with paid advertising these days is competition. Even in a relatively niche field, you likely have to deal with multiple competitors vying for the same attention on the platform. The best way to overcome this challenge is to constantly optimize your ads and create them to appeal to a particular subset of people.

There are three key aspects to this approach you should bear in mind: 1) Make sure your ads (and all related funnel components) work well on any device. 2) Ensure you speak your prospects’ language. 3) Incorporate a hook that grabs their attention and makes them want to engage further with your ad.

Of course, this process is typically easier said than done. It usually takes time, practice, and trial and error with a specific social network to succeed at the right voice, find the right people and get them to convert once they take the next step and click on your ad.

If you’re looking for expert assistance with this entire process or want a few more sets of eyes looking at your current B2B ad campaign, FunnelEnvy can help. Our team works with B2B companies of all varieties, from tech to healthcare to finance and everything in between. If you want to learn more about our services and schedule a consultation to see if we can help your team grow, click here to complete a short quiz that will help you learn more about our pricing.

By Raj C|2022-11-03T05:31:31-07:00November 14th, 2022|Paid Media|0 Comments

The Most Important Paid Advertising Metrics for Your CRO

For a data-driven marketer that enjoys the challenge of finding patterns and applying them to business initiatives, paid ads are a great avenue to pursue growth. Besides how effectively they generate attention from a wide swath of online audiences – from healthcare professionals to manufacturing executives to business service providers – paid ad campaigns also provide a lot of information. Even when someone doesn’t fully engage with an ad campaign, it gives marketers feedback they can use to improve going forward.

And while this wealth of data generated by an ad campaign can be extremely valuable, it may pose a big challenge for some marketers. How do you know which data elements to give most of your attention? Which numbers really matter, and which might be somewhat deceptive as it relates to your campaign’s current success?

To help sort out your numbers, let’s go over some of the most essential paid ads metrics viewed through the lens of conversion rate optimization, the pursuit of converting more traffic into leads that have taken a specific action within your funnel.

Clickthrough Rate

You can calculate your ad campaign’s clickthrough rate as a percentage by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions, or how many times the ad shows up in a feed. Your clickthrough rate might not seem to be the most critical metric, but when paired with other numbers, it can help give you a good sense of where the problems may be in your campaign.

For example, you might compare your ad’s clickthrough rate (CTR) with the conversion rate of your campaign’s landing page. If your CTR is relatively high compared to your ad traffic, but you aren’t getting many conversions, it could be a sign that there’s an issue with the composition of your landing page. Use CTR as an indicator that reveals details about other conversion metrics.

Bounce Rate

A “bounce” is when a user loads only a single page and takes no action before leaving. Understanding your bounce rate is important because it helps tell a story about your ad campaign’s audience calibration. If you have a high bounce rate, it could be a sign that your ad isn’t showing up to the right audience. Your ad’s composition might draw people in, but they leave after it becomes clear the offer isn’t for them.

Another common culprit for high bounce rates is a technical error. This error sometimes comes in the form of a website that isn’t responsive and doesn’t load properly on a user’s device. If you notice a high bounce rate among mobile sessions, it’s probably a sign of some issue with your landing page or another part of your campaign on mobile.

Revenue Per Visitor

Revenue per visitor helps you quantify the portion of your ad campaign’s audience that converts into a paying client. It’s a simple calculation: the total number of visits to a campaign landing page divided by revenue earned from the ad campaign. Revenue per visitor helps you understand your campaign’s efficiency. For example, if your ads aren’t shown to an audience as large as you expected, but you’re still meeting internal projections related to sales and leads, limited traffic probably isn’t an issue.

On the other hand, when revenue per visitor is exceedingly low, it’s a sign that the audience for your ad campaign may not be as well-calibrated as you’d like or that there’s a block elsewhere in the funnel.

Meetings Set

In many of the most common B2B ad campaigns we see clients running, setting a meeting with someone responsible for sales is the typical next step. And while this element of the funnel may not seem directly related to an ad campaign, getting feedback about meetings with leads generated from ad campaigns is an excellent source of business intelligence.

For example, say you’re running a campaign centered on an ebook designed to inform prospects about proprietary business software your company developed. But after a few weeks of meeting with your sales team, they indicate that the lead magnet is giving leads an unrealistic perspective on what your software can accomplish. Now you have a specific diagnosis of how to improve your campaign. This scenario is another great example of why metrics should be shared with all of the company, even if they aren’t directly related to generating or processing them.

Getting feedback about meetings with leads generated from ad campaigns is an excellent source of business intelligence Click To Tweet

Time on Page

If visitors to your campaign landing page are spending a lot of time on the site and your conversion rate is where you want it to be, it’s a sign that your offer is compelling and makes people want to take the next step in your funnel. But if visitors have long sessions on your site without converting, it could indicate a problem with your offer, lead form, or whatever the next step in your campaign.

Like bounce rate, the time on page metric could indicate visitors are having trouble engaging with the offer in the desired manner. It may be a technical issue, something as simple as a button or link they can’t click with a mobile phone’s touch screen. Be sure to track this metric throughout the time your ad is up and running so that you can establish a benchmark for this metric to help understand when things are out of the ordinary.

Putting All Your Metrics Together

As you might have realized by now, there’s typically very little to gain from observing individual metrics in a vacuum. To truly make your ad campaign’s data actionable, you need to view it as a cohesive web of related measurements. Impressions are related to conversions, which are related to meetings set, and total revenue. This kind of connected thinking is the only reliable way to optimize your company’s ad campaigns with data.

But high-level success with this approach requires a bidirectional approach to data sharing within the company. Even as it relates to a specific ad campaign, getting information from other parts of your business – like sales and customer service, for example – can help optimize your efforts to get the most out of your ad spend. Not only does this philosophy help you increase the effectiveness of a single campaign, but it also creates an iterative profile of your ideal persona.

At FunnelEnvy, we specialize in helping clients maximize their ad campaigns by helping to unify data across the business. From social media campaign metrics to web analytics and sales, our platform allows you to generate a unified, detailed profile of your ideal customer that you can leverage for all types of marketing efforts in the future. We can also help optimize internal elements of your campaign, including landing pages and lead forms, to ensure that your funnel doesn’t have significant holes in it, causing leads to drop out.

Interested in learning more about our team and how we’ve helped some of the biggest names in the B2B tech space optimize their marketing funnels? Click here to fill out a short questionnaire to help us better understand your needs and determine if we’re a good fit to work together.

By Raj C|2022-06-30T04:53:52-07:00July 11th, 2022|Paid Media|0 Comments

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